The Logos and the logoi

Every created thing has a logos, a word or principle by which God intends it, and all of these are held together in the one Logos who became flesh. St Maximus works this out in the seventh Ambiguum: the logoi are not the things themselves and not a separate world of ideas, they are God’s wills concerning each thing, uncreated in Him and the reason each thing is the thing it is. To know a creature truly is therefore to read it back to its maker, and sin is refusing to. This is the Orthodox answer to the Platonic forms, and it is why contemplation of nature stands as a stage of the spiritual life between the keeping of the commandments and the knowledge of God.